III, FOREST PLANTING IN A TREELESS COUNTRY. 
To see the prairie and the plains is to know their needs. To travel 
over them, even for a day, will make you feel their greatest want—the 
want of trees. Wind swept every day, every hour, the comparative 
calm which even a single row of trees creates affords relief from the 
perpetual activity of the air beyond the influence of the wind break. 
Man, beast, and plant are constantly being dried out; evaporation can 
hardly keep the thirsty, ever- moving atmosphere supplied with mois- 
ture, and many a rain only touches the ground to be at once evaporated 
and returned to the clouds. 
The “treelessness” of the central plains has been explained by the 
deficient rainfall and consequent arid conditions of these localities, and 
until lately it has been doubted, and even now there are people who 
doubt the possibility of growing trees and forests in those localities 
without irrigation. 
For a large part of this region I do not share these doubts, nordo I 
believe that original aridity alone accounts for the condition in which 
we find this large region at present. As everything in nature is the 
result of a complication of conditions, so we may not dismiss such a 
phenomenon as a forestless area of several thousand square miles with 
the simple explanation that it was too dry for tree growth. The fact 
that this area is not absolutely treeless goes far to support the proposi- 
tion that it was not always forestless; and the mining of pine timber 
out of the sand hills of Nebraska proves the proposition beyond doubt 
for that section at least. 
It is not the speculation of mere curiosity to inquire into the causes of 
the absence of forests in this region; itis a practical question; for if we 
understand the causes which produced the present conditions we gain 
an insight into the possibilities of remedying them; we may learn 
whether nature decreed that this area shall forever be exposed to the 
- heating of the sun and sweeping of the winds or whether we may rea- 
sonably expect to cover its nakedness, and what are the difficulties in 
the way; we shall have a basis for our methods in the attempt to re- 
clothe these areas with forest growth. 
The entire earth may be said to be a potential forest. That is to say, 
if the interference of animal life and man were excluded in the struggle 
for existence among the different forms of vegetable life, wherever 
sufficient depth for its roots exists and winter cold does not preclude 
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